A Ninja's Magic
by Phalanxx
Summary: It started with two children's reckless idea – trying to summon their familiars – and it ended with a new and exciting life for a seven year old Louise de la Vallière.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"_Hum … Are you certain about this, Louise?" The princess of Tristain asked hesitantly. _

"_Of course I am Henrietta." A seven year old Louise de la Vallière replied. "Am I ever wrong?"_

"_No!" The princess answered immediately, stressing the word. Louise smiled at her, a bright, happy smile, and continued with her drawing._

_Henrietta paused for a second. Louise had been wrong before. There had been that time they ended up with their dresses torn and muddy. And the time Louise's mother found them and almost yelled at them, when they tried to climb the estate's tress. And there also was that one time with the wolf cubs._

_Now that Henrietta thought about it, Louise was actually wrong a lot. Maybe they shouldn't be doing this._

"_It's done!" Louise said happily. Henrietta blinked and focused on her friend's artwork. Either Louise was faster than she thought or she had spent a great amount of time in her own thoughts._

_Henrietta looked at the circle that her friend drew. It was pretty, although it didn't really have a circular shape; it was a little too flat for that. The grossly carved runes were easy to see, resting just inside the circumference. From what she could see, the runes were mostly correct, although the only thing Louise and her knew about them was what had been in the book they had found on summoning familiars._

_Henrietta started hesitating. Everything seemed alright, but maybe they shouldn't be doing this._

"_Hmm, Louise …" She started slowly. "Are you sure we should do this? Maybe we should wait for an adult."_

_Louise looked at her incredulously. "No! We have to do this. Don't tell me you're scared."_

_Henrietta twitched indignant and replied hotly. "Of course not."_

"_Good!" Louise continued "If my mother found us here we wouldn't be allowed to do this."_

"_I know." Henrietta riposted. "I just thought we shouldn't do this without an adult nearby."_

"_They wouldn't let us summon a familiar."_

_Henrietta opened her mouth to reply, but Louise interrupted her. "Puppies."_

_The princess closed her mouth._

"_You wanted a puppy right?" Louise continued. "That's why we decided to do this Ann, because of cute and fluffy puppies. Think about them."_

_Henrietta straightened as much as her seven year old body allowed, and royally declared. "Do as you must."_

_Louise grinned. It was always so easy to convince Henrietta. Slowly, she breathed and, with a nod to her royal friend, started to chant._

_They had found the book on summoning familiars in one of the libraries belonging to the royal family. It was an old book, clearly used a lot over the years and written in Romanian._

_Both girls were reasonably fluent in the language, as befitted nobility, and they had managed to slowly read the book; after finding its purpose they swiftly decided to actually try the familiar summoning ritual._

_It wasn't hard to arrange what they needed to enact it and two days later, after they finally managed to escape their guards, they were ready to try. _

_Henrietta focused on Louise, seeing her friend excitedly waving her wand as she chanted. She shook her head and smiled, Louise was one of her best friends, perhaps her only friend; to see her so excited practicing magic was invigorating, especially with all the troubles her friend usually had in using it._

_Louise continued for a few more moments until she finally drew to an end. _

_Both girls remained silent and still, waiting for something to happen._

_When more than a minute passed and no animal appeared the girls looked at each other and sighed._

"_We failed!" Louise said despondent._

_Henrietta shook her head. "It's alright Louise, this is really advanced magic."_

_Louise sighed again at that, but nodded and started walking towards the princess … and promptly fell through the ground._

_Henrietta looked at that for a few seconds, not believing what she had seen, before she started screaming._

"_Help! Somebody help."_

_When the royal guard arrived at the scene, only moments later, the only thing they found out was the horrified princess trying to dig the ground near a magic circle with her bare hands and screaming for her friend._

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"Louise Vallière." She heard her teacher's voice coming from the entrance of the classroom. Iruka-sensei stood there, holding a small clipboard, and looking right at her.

The twelve year old Louise gave a small nod, stood and readied herself to follow her teacher.

"Good luck, Louise-chan." Naruto said from behind her.

She turned towards the blond for a second, and smiled at him.

Naruto smiled back and raised both his hands, thumbs extended in an ok sign, hoping to encourage her.

Louise waved at him and followed the teacher out of the classroom. A few moments later they arrived at the door to another, bigger, classroom. Mizuki-sensei was already inside, seated at the teacher's desk. Several forehead protectors, engraved with a leaf symbol, rested on top of it.

The leaf symbol represented the Village Hidden in the Leaves; also known has Konohagakure, or simply Konoha, the village that had been Louise's home for the last years.

Iruka gestured Louise towards the front of the desk and then seated himself at Mizuki's side.

"Usually," He started, even as Louise stood straight in front of both her teachers. "Only the students that demonstrate the ability to master the three academy basic jutsu are allowed to become genin."

Louise tensed for a moment.

"Nonetheless, there are some exceptions." Iruka continued. "The Hokage intervened in your case and decided to wave away that requirement in your evaluation. He did so only because your bloodline makes it almost impossible for you to master any regular jutsu. As such, your evaluation will depend exclusively on the other skills you've shown during your years at the academy."

Louise sighed and relaxed.

Iruka smiled at her before continuing. "In theoretical matters you are one of our best students. Not the best, but you're close to it. You've also shown a better grasp of tactics and strategy than most of your peers."

"In taijutsu," Mizuki said, speaking for the first time. "You're one of our best female students; you have a good technique and you don't quit easily. The main reason why we do not grade you higher is because you lack the strength and speed of some of your classmates."

"As such," Iruka continued. "And in accordance with what the Hokage willed, we grant you your forehead protector, and promote you to the rank of genin of Konohagakure no Sato."

Iruka picked one of the forehead protectors and passed it to Louise. She smiled and received it with a small thank you.

"Now, new genin are usually assigned a team a few days after graduating, but it appears that the Hokage has made some kind of arrangement in your case. He wanted you to meet him later in the day." Iruka said.

Louise looked at him, surprised.

"As such," Iruka continued before Louise could question him. "This will be the last time we will meet as student and sensei. From now on we will be comrades; both of us will be shinobi of the leaf. Good luck, Louise-chan."

"Thank you!" Louise replied with heartfelt sentiment. She smiled at both of her teachers, waved enthusiastically and left the room.

Louise felt happy. At first, she had been afraid that what most people perceived as her lack of ability to mold chakra would result in she being held back for one more year at the academy, but fortunately the Hokage intervened and that didn't happen.

A few moments later she arrived at the academy's entrance, and found out that a good number of parents and students were already there; most of the students present had a forehead protector and were being congratulated by their families and friends.

Louise stilled for a second, frozen – looking at the happy view – before she shook her head and held back her tears. _This_ was the reason why Louise so desperately wanted to become a ninja; so that she could one day return home, to once again see her mother, father and sisters.

Louise knew her attempt at magic, back when she had been playing with Henrietta, sent her to this world and only magic could send her back. Unfortunately, magic as it was practiced back home didn't exist here; the closest thing to it where the shinobi arts.

Louise sighed and started leaving, until she saw a pink haired girl trading barbs with a blonde girl. The blonde parents seemed content to simply look at the spectacle, smiling. Louise grinned and shook her head, this time in bemusement; Sakura and Ino never changed. Without another thought Louise moved to join her friends.

Sakura saw her coming first and smiled at her. Louise showed her the forehead protector she held in her hand and Sakura's smile became bigger. Most people who didn't knew them seemed to think Louise and Sakura where related, at least at first sight. Pink was a basically unheard hair color and that, together with their similar coloring, tended to make people think of them as family, even if they really weren't.

Ino turned around to see what had made Sakura smile like that and ended up smiling herself seeing the new genin. "Managed to pass, uh?"

"Yep." Louise replied with a smile.

They spent the next minutes talking about the test. Both girls said they didn't have much difficulties passing and that most of their colleagues also managed to pass. Louise filled the information away and after a few more minutes of talk said her goodbyes and left. She needed to eat lunch before she visited the Hokage tower in the afternoon.

Her walk through the village wasn't long. She only needed around ten minutes to get from the academy to her apartment. It wasn't a very big apartment; compared to what was Louise's home before she arrived at this world it was incredibly tiny, but she didn't complain. It had the basic anyway; a bedroom, bathroom and a kitchen that also managed to be big enough to double as a study room.

Louise started preparing a light meal.

She thought about eating out today as celebration, but decided to simply prepare her own food; her allowance from the Konoha orphans fund wasn't much and Louise didn't want to get used to spending money carelessly.

Sometime later she left her home and set out for the Hokage's tower.

The tower was a big red building where the leader of the village lived and it also doubled as the seat of governance of the village, where most of the official ninja's businesses where conducted.

Louise entered the tower and followed up the stairs until she arrived at the entrance of the Hokage's office. She spoke to the secretary working there and after being told that the leader of the village was occupied she sat down and waited.

The pink haired girl had to patiently wait for almost an hour before she was ushered inside the office.

After entering the office Louise moved forwards and stood at attention. "Hokage-sama!"

"Good day, Louise." The old ninja greeted, smiling.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Louise questioned after a few moments in which the Hokage remained quiet.

"Yes." The Hokage replied before stopping for a moment in order to light his smoking pipe. "I've wanted to speak to you about your team."

Louise continued silently waiting for the older man to speak, even as he puffed at his pipe.

"Unlike most of your classmates, you will be joining an already existing genin team. Team fourteen has been in circulation for over two years, but unfortunately one of their team members suffered a crippling injury a few months ago and will be unable to continue his ninja career."

Louise nodded at that, acknowledging what the old man was saying. It wasn't rare for ninja to suffer injuries like these. Most of them eventually integrated into the village's non-ninja population, although some remained working as ninjas in non-combat roles.

"Your teammates are several years older than you." The Hokage continued. "They are experienced genin and I believe they will be good companions for you to have."

The older man stopped for a moment to puff his pipe.

"I am going to be very honest with you, Louise; barring something completely unexpected, neither of your teammates will be a great ninja, or even a very good one."

Louise narrowed her eyes at that. Hadn't the Hokage already said they would be good companions?

"Both of them had to repeat the genin examination several times until there was a jounin-sensei that decided to give them a chance. Even then, they passed in great part because they were the first team that jounin was supposed to sponsor. He showed himself somewhat lenient with them and let them become genin. Nonetheless, in these years they have managed to shown they deserved to become genin."

Louise became confused. The Hokage seeing this gestured for her to speak.

"What does the jounin sensei have to do with becoming a genin?" She asked. "Isn't this why the genin examination exists?"

"No." The older ninja replied with a serious face. "The truth test to become a genin is done by the jounin-sensei that eventually will train the genin team. The examination realized at the academy will only serve to eliminate the really weak candidates, those that have no chance to become genin."

Louise opened and closed her mouth several times before she managed to ask. "Then I'm not a genin yet?"

The Hokage puffed at his pipe a little more before replying. "You are. By deciding to put you in this team, I've basically passed you on your final genin examination."

Louise stilled for a moment and then very slowly bowed, trying to convene her respect at the old man. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"Give me none of that Louise-chan." The old man said with a chuckle while shaking his finger at her, before he continued more seriously. "I did not choose you to complete team fourteen as a favor to you. It was simply that you were the more appropriated candidate to do it, taking in account the circumstances."

Louise looked curiously at that. "What circumstances?"

"Someone from your class would have to be the one to do it. We couldn't continue with team fourteen as a three man squad." He answered. "Also both of your new teammates have their ninja career basically planed and their skills very well defined. Most of the time they either train by themselves or have specific mentors to improve their specialties and as such their jounin-sensei has a great amount of free time. Time he will use to help you figure out your bloodline's abilities."

"Will he be able to help me?" Louise eagerly asked.

"The only one who will be truly able to figure out your bloodline is you Louise." The Hokage replied seriously. "Your sensei will only be able to give you a small push; you're the only one who can do it."

Louise looked crestfallen at that.

"I've told you all of that before, Louise." The older ninja said after seeing her face. "You have a completely unknown bloodline and it will be hard to master it, but you shouldn't despair; many other people found themselves in your situation and managed to prosper. Besides your blood does grant you powerful abilities, as we seen before."

Some hope seemed to return to the young girl.

"You must never give up or you will never manage to complete your goal."

"Yes Hokage-sama." Louise replied. She had her goal after all and the old man knew it, she had to master her magic, master her abilities in order to return home and see her family again.

"Very well." The Hokage said after seeing some fire return to the girl. "Later this year your new team will probably be selected to go onto the chunin examinations."

Louise opened her mouth in surprise again.

"It will be your teammates second time in the chunin exams." The older shinobi continued, not letting Louise interrupt him. "Probably this examination will be the last where they will compete in; they are good enough at their preferred skills that they will soon be promoted to chunin and assume bigger responsibilities in the village."

"What do you mean?"

"Ai-chan, your female teammate, is training in medicine and will eventually become either a nurse or assistant at the hospital. In a few years she might even rate as a med-nin, but that's a long way off." The Hokage explained. "Your other teammate is Hayato-kun. He has more cerebral skills and his understanding of mathematics will probably lead him to become an asset down in Intelligence, either designing or breaking cryptographic cyphers."

Louise nodded, signaling her understanding. From what the Hokage was saying both her teammates where more oriented to non-combat roles and as such they would eventually be promoted to chunin and probably spend the rest of their lives working inside Konoha itself, never again seeing combat unless the village itself was attacked or some great war occurred.

The Hokage puffed his pipe again before continuing. "I'm warning you about the chunin exams because I want you to use this opportunity to develop as a ninja. Not many rookies get sent on their first exam in their first year. You have a golden opportunity here Louise, that for the next few months you will basically have a jounin-sensei tending exclusively to your skills, don't waste it."

Louise bowed again and replied. "I won't."

"Good!" The old man replied with a smile. "Then don't let me hold you any longer. Tomorrow morning you may meet your new team in training ground number twelve at eight o'clock in the morning."

Louise nodded again at the older shinobi and left the room after saying her goodbyes.

So intent was she in her thoughts that she did not see the old man looking expectantly at her as she left.

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The Hokage kept his narrowed gaze fixed in Louise's back until she left the room. After a moment he sighed and seemingly relaxed. He kept quiet for a few moments before puffing his pipe a little and asking out loud. "What do you think?"

"She's a serious little thing, isn't she?" A man's voice replied. He became visible walking down the wall of the office, from where he had been hidden near the ceiling.

Kaito Watanabe was a short man with tanned skin and hair kept short, cut in a military fashion; he was also Louise's new jounin sensei.

The Hokage chuckled. "Louise-chan is very respectful to her elders, unlike most children her age, although she's less restrained when she is with her peers."

The other man nodded. "What do we know about her bloodline limit?"

"Not much." The Hokage started after puffing his pipe again. "For certain, we know that it's a completely unknown bloodline, but not much else. You can find most of the details we do know about it in the file we sent you about Louise."

Kaito made a mental note to finish reading Louise's file before meeting her the next day.

"We do know" The Hokage continued speaking. "That her bloodline somehow changes how her body produces chakra. She can produce chakra and a great amount of it, for someone her age, but the chakra she produces is … volatile; almost corrosive to regular chakra and prone to explode."

"Does that mean she won't be able to use any regular jutsu?" Kaito questioned, curious.

"No, I don't believe that will happen." The older ninja replied after a moment. "While's it's true she hasn't managed to successfully use any jutsu, she has managed to learn tree walking as well as water walking, so it seems she is capable of using chakra like we do, it simply is much harder for her to learn. She needed almost a year to learn both walking exercises."

Louise's jounin sensei stored that information away before questioning. "What was the ability she managed to create? The one you mention when talking to her?"

"Oh that?" The Hokage questioned amused. "Her explosive fist technique, as I've taken to call it? It's quite an impressive technique, for a genin, and quite similar to some abilities of members of the Iwagakure Blast Corps."

Kaito raised his eyebrow questionably.

The Hokage chuckled. "Let's say you will be quite surprised. I'm sure Louise will be happy to show it to you tomorrow."

The jounin-sensei nodded at that, it was usually better to see a live demonstration anyway. "There's something I still can't understand sir. Why did you go through all this trouble in order to accommodate a genin?"

The leader of the village took a few seconds to formulate his reply. "Louise's bloodline abilities might one day be of great use to our village; I believe there's great potential in it. If for some Louise won't reach that potential, she might pave the way so that one day some child of hers might be capable of doing so. In two or three generations we might have a new clan in Konoha and one more bloodline limit to call as our own."

"And you want me to help her."

"And you will help her." The Hokage affirmed.

Kaito waited for a moment, wondering if the older shinobi would say anything else about the situation.

The Hokage seemed to be in his thoughts until he obviously reached some conclusion and nodded to himself. "There's something else you need to know about Louise, something that's not in the file we sent you or in any other file about her."

Watanabe remained silent, wondering.

"Louise-chan wasn't born in Konoha," The Hokage started. "We don't actually know where she was born. She was brought a few years ago into the Village by Jiraiya when he found her in one of his travels."

"Found her?" the jounin questioned, even while he wondered why the great toad sage bothered bringing the girl to Konoha.

"Yes." The Hokage replied. "He found her in a small settlement in Tea Country. He became curious about her when he saw how the people behaved around her. Some people shunned her; some looked at her in what he described as wonder. He decided to stay a while in that place and find out why."

The old man paused for a moment to inhale some more tobacco.

"It didn't take him long to find out what he needed. It seemed Louise had appeared out of mid-air in their midst a few months before; from what some people described it was as if she fell up from the ground. Jiraiya didn't found that so strange, but he is a shinobi and these were simple people that lived in the middle of a forest. Shinobi and their arts are uncommon occurrences to most of them. Jiraiya started wondering how she arrived there; was it some kind of reverse-summoning or some kind of jutsu? He decided to ask her directly."

"What did he find out?" Kaito questioned, curious about his new student.

"Louise-chan was living with an older couple who had taken her in." The Hokage continued, not yet responding to the jounin's question. "She knew only a smattering of words of our language, but she managed to communicate well enough. Jiraiya questioned her, but the only answer she gave him was magic. Eventually he managed to find how more about the circumstances and discovered Louise had tried some kind of ritual that had brought her there. Seeing that she did not know how to return to her home he offered to bring her to where someone might be able to help her. He brought her to Konoha."

"She did not know our language?" The younger ninja questioned surprised.

"No." The Hokage replied. "Jiraiya thought she might be from some previously unknown country, further west, but we could never confirm it."

"So what happened after she arrived here?"

"Louise was tutored on our language, both spoken and written, for some months before we slowly questioned her about her origins. That's where things became strange."

"How so?" Louise's sensei questioned.

"Louise-chan believes she was born in another world."

"What?" The younger ninja questioned, confused.

"Louise believes she was born in another world," The Hokage repeated. "And that she came here because of the ritual she enacted. She did not use this exact wording, but the world she described as the one she was born is completely different from ours."

The jounin remained quiet for some time, stunned into silence. "That's ridiculous!" He said at last.

"Most people thought so."

"Most?" Louise's sensei questioned loudly.

"Jiraiya … I'm not going to say he believed her, but he thought there was something more to her story. Louise herself also never had any doubts about her origins." The Hokage replied hesitantly.

It took only a second for Kaito to process what the Hokage was telling him. "She still believes that? And you let her?"

"I did not let her, as you said." The Hokage denied. "She simply won't be convinced otherwise and, in the end of it, we couldn't disprove her story."

"How so?"

"How do you prove someone wasn't born on another world?" The Hokage questioned with a shrug. "Especially when they remember it in so much detail as Louise does. She remembers some fantastical things, even by ninja standards; she remembers a world with two moons and floating countries, and creatures such as dragons and unicorns. To her those are her childhood memories, and she believes them to be true."

Silence reined for a few moments, until Kaito broke it. "You think someone manipulated her memories. How? Genjutsu?"

The Hokage paused for a moment before replying. "No, I doubt it. Louise's bloodline makes her incredibly resistant to genjutsu - as I've told you before her chakra has an adverse effect on any other chakra; chakra that interacts with Louise's is usually disrupted. As such the only most powerful genjutsu will even affect her for more than a moment. I don't believe there's anyone powerful enough to manipulate her is such a manner."

"Maybe she hadn't awakened her bloodline yet?"

"Maybe," The Hokage replied. "And that doesn't cover other means of manipulation, especially manipulation of a small child; anyways the heart of the matter is another. Why would someone twist a child's memory so? What was the point? Was it simply to see if they could or was there some greater goal behind it? And did someone else have this done to them? We can't answer these questions and that's the real problem behind it."

The Hokage couldn't disguise the weariness in his voice as he spoke.

Kaito remained silent a few moments, thinking about what the older shinobi told him, before he focused on one of the Hokage's points. "You think Louise is some kind of spy?"

The Hokage smiled sadly at him for a moment, silently congratulating him, before replying. "No, not Louise-chan. The circumstances that brought her here are too … unpredictable, too random. For most of the time Jiraiya doesn't know where he will move next, or when; no one would foresee where he would go or that he would pay attention to what appeared to be the pariah of a small backwater village, much less that he would bring her back to Konoha. I truly believe that the fact he met her was a coincidence."

"But that doesn't exclude the fact that there might be someone else on Konoha that is a spy, someone who had his or hers memories manipulated." Kaito affirmed slowly.

"Yes." The Hokage confirmed. "If anyone is capable of doing something so far reaching as what was done to Louise's memories, they might have done it to someone else."

The younger shinobi nodded, worried about the thought.

"Or it might have been an isolated incident, someone who simply tried to see if it was possible." The Hokage continued after a while. "And we are simply worried about nothing. Or she wasn't actually manipulated and it's a simple delusion."

"Sir," Kaito started speaking hesitantly. "Shouldn't the members of the Yamanaka clan be capable of discerning if her memories are true, or simply manipulated?"

"Usually yes," The Hokage replied. "But her bloodline also affects their abilities. They never managed to gleam more than a few instants of her memories before they were evicted from her mind."

"That's a very useful ability." Kaito muttered to himself.

The Hokage heard him. "Yes it is, and the fact her mind is so protected is one more motive some people are weary of her. I want you to keep an eye on Louise. I don't doubt she is loyal to the leaf, I believe in her, but we must be careful; if someone really did manipulate Louise's mind like this she might be valuable to them and they might come to collect their prize. Be vigilant."

"I will, Hokage-sama. I won't disappoint you."

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It didn't take long for Louise to the entrance of her apartment's complex. She was starting to enter when someone ran out and crashed against her.

"Ouch." She said from where she ended up on the ground.

"Sorry Louise-chan." Naruto said sheepishly.

"Watch where you're going, Naruto." Louise said, grimacing. That had hurt.

"Sorry, I was just in a hurry." He said even as he reached down and helped her up.

"So, did you pass?" Louise asked after he helped her. She had noticed his lack of forehead protector, but maybe he only left it in his house or something.

Naruto shook his head, but grinned. "No, but don't worry Louise-chan, there's another way to pass."

"What?" Louise questioned confused, but Naruto ignored her and ran off before the pink haired girl could do anything.

"Idiot…" She muttered to herself, amused, even as the blond boy blasted away to get himself into some problem as usual.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The next day Louise arrived early at the training ground, only to find her new sensei was already there.

He wasn't anyone Louise had ever heard of or seen around before, so she didn't quite know what to expect of him.

He started by introducing himself; they talked for a few moments and then he remained silent, waiting for the rest of the team. If Louise had to describe him she would probably use the word average a lot: average weight and height, average looks, average everything really. Louise wondered if that was a good or bad thing for a ninja.

It didn't take long for her new teammates to appear.

They arrived together, Louise's female teammate dragging the last member of the team behind her, while the boy tried to keep up with her.

The older girl, Ai, if Louise remembered what the Hokage told her correctly, was beautiful. She was sixteen or seventeen years old at the most; she was short yet her body was already showing up the curves of a grown woman's body. Her brown hair was long and straight, and framed a face that was carefree and youthful.

Louise's other teammate had a far less striking appearance. He was tall, a little taller than their sensei, with his black hair styled into short spikes. His face was round and showed a little of extra weight that was unusual on most shinobi.

"You're late kids." Kaito-sensei said to them after they arrived.

"Sorry sensei, my fault." Ai replied with a grin, while sheepishly resting her hand on the back of her head. "I burnt my breakfast, so when Hayato-kun came to get me we had to go eat something out."

From the tired manner in which Kaito-sensei muttered and shook his head at that, Louise figured this wasn't the first time something like this had happened.

"Ok, kids" Their sensei continued after a moment. "Meet Louise Vallière, your new teammate. I hope you will be able to introduce yourselves without any kind of catastrophe occurring."

Ai stuck her tongue at the jounin; he pretended not to notice.

"Hi!" The older girl said after turning towards Louise. "I'm Ai Tachibana, nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too." Louise replied.

Ai moved forward and stood right in front of Louise. She looked seriously at her for a few moments before she grinned and started patting the pink haired girl's head. "I like you, you're all cute. Love the hair."

She turned towards the rest of team and repeated. "I like her. We can keep her."

Louise blushed, embarrassed. She wanted to loudly proclaim she wasn't a pet to be kept, but she lost her nerve at seeing the older girl's happy grin. Ai-chan was simply welcoming her into the team in her own manner, Louise hoped.

Their sensei meanwhile was rubbing his brow and muttering under his breath once again.

Louise's last teammate didn't seem as excited about her as Ai did. He looked the pink haired girl up and down and something in his gaze told Louise he found her lacking. "So _this_ is our new teammate?"

Louise tried not to bristle at his tone. In a way she could understand his disdain. He was several years older and had been a genin for at least three or four years, while she was a rookie recently promoted from the academy, it wasn't exactly fair on them.

A second later Louise's short fuse exploded and she lost any chance of playing it cool.

"Yes. What about it?" She asked, narrowing her gaze at him.

He scoffed and turned to his sensei. "Really?"

Before Louise or their sensei could do anything Ai appeared at Hayato's side and hit him on his head, none too gently. "Stop it, spikes. I know you're pissed about how now you won't have as much time to continue romancing our last teammate …"

"What?" Hayato shouted in a shrill voice.

"… But you shouldn't blame pinky here because of it. You can always meet him after training after all."

Denials and rebuttals followed, and Louise found herself looking wide-eyed as her teammates bickered in front of her.

"So" Their sensei said loudly to Louise, ignoring the quarrel between the older genin. "You've meet my bothersome genin."

"Get off your high horse, sensei." Ai replied with a wide smile. "We barely bother you at all."

"I wish I was that lucky." Their sensei muttered loud enough for them to hear, before he straightened himself and continued in a far more serious voice. "Hayato, greet your teammate in the correct manner."

The younger male looked disgruntled, but turned towards Louise. "I'm Hayato Minami. Nice to meet you."

Louise nodded at him.

"Good. Now you two" Their sensei said turning towards Louise's teammates. "Know what to do. Meet us here in the afternoon."

Both of them nodded and left, with a small wave goodbye in Ai's case. Louise looked questionably at her sensei.

"Your teammates are old enough to take care of their own training, for the most part." Kaito explained. "Ai-chan uses her most of her mornings to train her ability to heal with the medic-nins at the hospital. In turn, Hayato prefers to train his ninjutsu by himself; he says he needs the silence to concentrate."

"But you're our sensei! Shouldn't you been teaching us?" Louise said, confused.

Her sensei shrugged. "Yes, but I can only teach you until a certain point. Eventually you'll want to learn something that I won't be able to teach you. Ai wants to learn medicinal jutsu while Hayato is training in fire elemental ninjutsu; both of these are skills I lack, so they found other means to learn."

Louise nodded at that.

"That doesn't mean we don't train together however." Louise's sensei continued. "There's still many skills they need to improve, things like tactics or teamwork, but we don't need to spend the entire day for that. Now I want to see how good your taijutsu is. We're going to spar, hand to hand combat only."

He gestured for her to start.

Louise cautiously moved forward and attacked.

It didn't take long for her to confirm what she already knew; she was completely outmatched. No matter how she tried to attack him, her sensei always managed to either dodge or block and he didn't even bother to try to hit her back.

Punches, kicks, and feints, nothing worked on him.

After a few minutes Louise started to slow down a little, tired. Seeing this, her sensei decided to counter-attack.

Louise tried a two punch combination, followed by a side kick. Her sensei dodged it, as usual, and then he moved fast, faster than Louise could see and appeared behind her, grabbing her by the neck.

Louise froze.

He released her and moved slowly around her. "Your taijutsu is not bad; you know your forms and I can see you've practiced them extensively, but you're slow and lack strength. You're stamina is also something we need to work on."

He stopped and stood in front of her. "We'll probably focus on increasing your speed first, and we will have to find a way to make your hits count, else you'll be hard pressed to actually win a fight; perhaps some kind of weapon."

Louise nodded at him, still somewhat out of breath.

"I've read your scores with kunai and shuriken at the academy. They're reasonable, but we will have to improve them; that's the only way you have to attack an opponent at a distance."

"Yes sensei." Louise acknowledged.

"The Hokage told me you do have some kind of bloodline ability, but he didn't explain. I want you to show me."

Louise nodded at him and after looking around she found a good target to demonstrate. It was an old tree trunk; large in its width, yet short in its height. Its appearance showed it was a usual target for ninja training, charred and nicked as it was.

Louise moved until she stood in front of it and readied herself. She focused on her chakra and lashed out with her fist, hitting the old tree trunk right in middle.

The trunk exploded, blasted apart in small pieces, none of them bigger than Louise's head.

Kaito blinked and then opened his mouth before closing it without speaking. The old man Hokage had been right, he thought to himself, it was an impressive ability; with that Louise could become a quite deadly taijutsu user.

"Let's forget about using weapons, _that's_ how you can make your hits count." He said, not letting the fact he was impressed show on his voice. It was never a good idea to let your genin think they were hot stuff. "How many of those can you use, before you're out of chakra?"

"I don't know, I never tried to find my limit." Louise replied.

"Make an estimative."

"I could probably manage eight, ten at the maximum."

There was no way of that being true, Kaito thought to himself. Bloodline ability or not, it would take quite a good bit of chakra in order to so thoroughly destroy something as large as that tree trunk. She would need to have some very impressive chakra reserves to manage that many attacks.

He decided not to worry about it; eventually he would test her limit and find out the truth. "How well can you regulate the output of the technique? And do you need to hit something in order to activate it?"

"I haven't managed to control the blast at all, although when I'm angry it's usually bigger." Louise answered, shaking her head. "And I don't need to hit anything in order to trigger it."

"So it's basically an explosion you can trigger anywhere your fist is. Although looking better at it" Louise's sensei spoke while looking at the destruction her jutsu brought. "It's more of a blast wave, isn't it? There's very little fire."

"Yes." Louise replied.

"It's also somehow directed away from you, protecting you from its reach."

Louise simply nodded, confirming it.

Kaito nodded to himself, slowly. It was quite a good technique. Most genin wouldn't have one better; scratch that, most _chunin_ wouldn't have one better, at least for close combat.

"What other skills do you have?" He questioned, curious about what else she knew.

"I can both tree and water walk."

Kaito sensed some hesitation about the manner in which she spoke. "… But?"

"I can't use then very well," Louise replied hesitantly. "I don't actually fall or anything, but for some reason I tend to … burn, I guess, whatever footwear I have after sometime. Sometimes I also burn the trees a little."

"Hmm."

That could easily be because of the nature of her chakra, Kaito thought. If the Hokage was right about how it functioned, the chakra might corrode whatever it had prolonged contact with. Better chakra control could probably help with that, or at least improve the situation. It was something to think about.

He thought about what he knew about her for a few moments in silence and nodded.

"We should probably start by focusing your training in taijutsu for now. Start your mornings with some runs, stretches and maybe some weight lifting. We will also probably spar a good deal; I will try to teach a few new moves and try to prepare you for a somewhat faster fight pace."

Louise nodded at him.

"We will also try to improve your chakra control, at least until you can manage the tree walking exercise without causing any kind of damage. You seem to have some good chakra reserves, so we can probably use a few hours of the day for that, improving your stamina at the same time." He finished. "Any questions?"

"No sensei." Louise replied.

"Good, then meet me here after lunch and we will start your training."

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.

.

Louise surprised herself with how easily she got used to her new schedule.

In the mornings she trained alone with Kaito-sensei. They usually focused on improving her physical condition; there was a lot of running and tree walking involved, as well as a good bit of weight lifting and frequent spars.

Kaito-sensei was pretty harsh all throughout it; he wanted Louise to always run a little faster, to hit a little harder, to always be better than she was. Only the fact that deep down inside Louise knew he was doing this for her – and the fact she didn't want to get arrested for murder – kept her from trying to find out just what her explosive fist technique would do to a human.

The afternoons were usually calmer, either spent in some mission or training with her teammates. During these training sessions Kaito was far less demanding in a physical aspect, often preferring to train their teamwork, their tactics or their reasoning skills.

Most of the missions they did were … boring. D-ranks were the bottom of the barrel missions, basically chores the shinobi did for the population that lived in Konoha, things like shopping for food, walking dogs around or even cleaning jobs.

Louise knew these missions served their purpose. They were good enough to foster teamwork and patience in genin teams, and at the same time they were a source of income for ninja who needed it, such as the referred genin teams and some chunins. It still didn't stop Louise from feeling they were a waste of time. Only the fact that she was exhausted for most of the time she worked in these stopped her from complaining more than she already did.

As the days passed, Louise slowly got to know her teammates better.

Ai was rude, loud, and funny, someone capable of raising anyone's spirit no matter the mood; the older girl simply radiated happiness. She had almost immediately taken Louise under her wing, and helped the younger girl in whatever she could. She also loved to tease and irritate the pink haired girl, much to Louise's consternation, who tried to stay mad at the older girl whenever she did something, but could never manage to do it for long.

Ai also behaved … Louise hesitated to use the word motherly, although she was sure some people would use that term to describe how Ai behaved towards the team; Louise herself wouldn't use that word, the memories she retained from her own mother showed her to be a strict and demanding woman, much unlike Ai herself. Louise was certain her mother had loved her, of course, but she was sure it was in a far more dignified manner than the one Ai presented.

Louise's relationship with Hayato was different. He hadn't professed any more doubts out loud about her – Louise believed Ai had something to do with this - but he clearly wasn't happy to have her there. Nonetheless Louise couldn't fault his behavior and he did his utmost to make their team work.

Their sensei was the hardest one to figure out. He demanded a lot from them and managed to get them to coordinate fairly well, but he mostly kept to himself. Louise never could figure out what he was thinking about, unlike with her teammates; Ai and Hayato wore their emotions on their faces most of the time.

Louise went on her first C-rank mission three weeks after joining the team.

It was a pretty simple mission; they only had to escort a merchant caravan from Konoha to one of the border cities of Fire Country, and return. It wasn't exactly exciting, but at least they ended up having a good deal of free-time during the evenings to keep up their training, so Louise thought it was certainly better than a D-rank. The pay was higher as well.

That was simply the first of several C-ranks mission their team took. After a while they even abandoned D-ranks completely – much to Louise's joy – and dedicated themselves exclusively to training and C-rank missions. This led Louise to once again getting used to a new routine: a more erratically timed one, with no hard set schedules. Nonetheless, the pay was better, the training became easier to endure and the missions they took were paradoxically safe – at least for a shinobi's standards.

At least, until one particular mission …

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.

.

"Ok kids, this is good enough." Kaito-sensei said looking around at the small clearing they found on the woods. "Ai, Hayato set up camp. Louise, follow me."

Louise nodded and put her backpack down.

"Why do we always have to be the ones to set up camp while _she_ gets to train?" Hayato mumbled questionably.

The jounin-sensei ignored his question.

Louise didn't though and turned around, reading herself to retort, only to find Ai already taking care of it.

"Ah, how daring, you want sensei to whale on your cute little butt, is that it Hayato?" Ai singsonged. "I didn't know you were into _that_. Not that I find anything wrong with it; I just didn't think you were quite that kinky."

Hayato spluttered.

Louise turned around again, decided to ignore her teammates bickering, and followed her sensei. She didn't know what the hell Ai was talking about and she was sure she really, really didn't want to find out.

A few moments later she found her teacher waiting inside the woods, leaning against a tree.

"You know the drill." Kaito-sensei said once Louise was in front of him. "Don't use your explosive ability, everything else is fair game. If you manage to hit me you win. Good luck."

Louise nodded.

"Begin."

Louise started by throwing a kunai at her sensei. Not because she actually believed she would manage to hit him, but because she needed a moment or two to gain some distance and come up with some semblance of a plan to try and take him on.

The jounin sensei casually reached up with his hand and caught the small knife, before throwing it at the ground, but it was enough for Louise. When the weapon hit the ground the young girl had already managed to put a good amount of distance between them.

Louise kept running and even as she ran she looked around, trying to find out anything she could use to help her win.

Kaito-sensei's manner of fighting was very peculiar. He was a taijutsu master that used a small amount of genjutsu together with his hand-to-hand fighting. It wasn't very advanced genjutsu; he used small tricks like making people hear sounds that weren't there, or messing a little bit with their depth perception in order to distract a person just before he hit them.

Unfortunately for Louise, this tactic worked quite well against her. Her bloodline protected her against most genjutsu, but it did so by breaking them immediately after they started affecting her, so that they barely affected her for more than an instant.

The problem was that Kaito-sensei relied just on that small instant of disorientation on his targets to strike, and Louise found herself helpless to stop him.

Louise shook her head and cursed under her breath when she failed to find anything she could use around, and suddenly Kaito-sensei was almost on top of her.

He started the fight with a kick aimed at her head. She managed to crouch, slightly, and his leg passed over her. Louise used the opportunity and swiftly counter-attacked with her right fist, but her sensei parried it aside and replied with another kick.

Louise jumped back in order to avoid it, and reaching down grabbed a few shuriken from the pouch at her waist. The moment her feet hit the ground she threw them as fast as she could at her sensei.

He stilled for a moment and then simply danced around the thrown weapons.

He did it with incredible grace and speed, in a seemingly effortless move, and the kunai passed by him without doing any harm.

Louise didn't waste her chance. Before he finished dodging she moved, and in the moment the thrown weapons finished moving past him the pink haired girl was close enough to try and kick her sensei's head in.

He saw her come, and repeated Louise's previous move and ducked beneath her leg.

He also did it better than she ever could, crouching to the point he was basically hitting the ground with his head, in a particularly mocking manner, and Louise gritted her teeth as she saw it.

The next few minutes were a whirlwind of movement as each fighter tried to get the best of the other, each one of them dancing around the other and trying to score a hit, before they parted for a bit.

Louise shook her head. She was twice as fast and strong as she had been in the day she had fought her sensei for the first time, but she still couldn't manage to even hit him once.

Kaito-sensei nodded to himself, slightly.

Louise saw the motion and readied herself. He was going to start to take this fight a little more seriously and Louise knew she was going to start to hurt soon.

An instant later he ran at her, faster than before, fast enough that the only thing she could do was raise her arms and try to block his attack. She failed and was kicked in the stomach for her troubles. She was hit hard enough that she flew through the air and crashed two or three meters away.

She winced and clutched her stomach, even as she internally raged at her stupidity. Kaito-sensei had used one of his genjutsu to fool her vision into thinking he was further back than that he really was, and she fell for it. She _should_ have known that he would start trying to use genjutsu now that he decided to step up the pace of the fight.

Louise slowly started getting up. Kaito-sensei never attacked her while she was down. Part of Louise was grateful for it, while another raged at the complete disregard he showed for her as a ninja.

She breathed slowly. If she wanted to ever manage to hit her sensei she needed a way to get rid of his genjutsu, something to neutralize it, and there was only one way to do so.

Louise started focusing on her chakra, manipulating and preparing it. She slowly spread a bit of it all over her skin, much like a cloth that completely covered her. It was hard, incredibly so, and she only managed to do it thanks to her much improved chakra control. It took a few moments before she finished.

It was harder for her to move like this – it took a great deal of thought to keep the technique active – but somehow Louise did it.

It was the first time she was using this technique during a fight; she had practiced with it a great deal of course, and she was sure it would do what she wanted, but keeping it active during a fight was an additional hurdle she wasn't accustomed to.

She attacked once again. She moved close to her sensei and lashed out with a punch, and when he dodged that, she followed with a kick. He had no problems blocking her attacks and punched back.

Louise managed to block it, but it hurt. Kaito-sensei clearly wasn't holding back as much as before. They kept going at this increased tempo for a while, with Louise doing poorly and accumulating hits; her lack of focus in the fight started to become evident.

Her sensei noticed it, obviously – Louise rarely let anything distract her from a fight – and stepped back for a moment waiting for her to attack.

Louise didn't hesitate and threw herself at him.

Her first attacks were dodged; the kunai she had meanwhile picked up was twisted out of her hand and a shove from her sensei sent her reeling backwards. Louise gritted her teeth and kept on the offensive.

She moved to attack him again and her sensei waited until she was almost on top of him to move. When he did so he moved to his left, fast and seemingly relaxed … Which was why he didn't react fast enough to stop Louise's kick from clipping him on his side.

Both of them froze after the hit and simply looked into the other's widened eyes.

"Congratulations!" Her sensei spoke after the few moments of startled silence. "You finally managed to hit me."

Louise remained still for a moment, before her lips twitched and she started grinning. "I did it, I finally did it." She said, before letting herself fall to the ground exhausted.

"Yes, well…" Kaito-sensei replied. "You got lucky. My last genjutsu didn't affect you at all. It's was supposed to basically mirror your vision and make you see things the things on your left as if they were happening on your right and vice-versa."

Louise grinned wider. "Heheh."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're very smug about that."

"Am I?" Louise tried to ask innocently.

Kaito sighed. "From all the habits she could have picked up …" He muttered before speaking louder. "What did you do?"

"Nothing much." Louise replied. "I simply used my new technique."

"Which is?" Her sensei questioned at the same time he gestured with his hand for her to continue speaking.

"I basically put a small layer of chakra surrounding all of my body." The pink haired girl explained. "I figured that if my chakra disrupts genjutsu, then a small barrier of it surrounding me would make it impossible for an enemy's genjutsu to affect me. Its chakra would be disrupted the moment it interacted with mine."

Kaito paused and looked at her. It actually was a pretty good idea, and it apparently worked, seeing has his last attempt to manipulate her senses failed. It would also probably require a good deal of chakra, or an incredible amount of chakra control, to use it and keep fighting.

The jounin-sensei resisted the urge to smile. That, more than anything else, showed just how well Louise had progressed in her training so far. She had much to improve, of course, but it was a sign of the potential that the girl had.

He was deeply impressed.

Not that he let her know that.

"Crude." He said, watching as Louise slowly stopped grinning and started gritting her teeth. "But it let you hit me once … after three months of spars."

Louise glowered at him.

Kaito smiled to himself. If he learned anything about his younger genin during these months was that anger was her greatest motivator.

"As a prize." He continued in a mocking tone. "You get to be taken a little more seriously from now on, and let me tell you, it's going to hurt."

.

.

.

"Crude, he says." Louise gritted out, in an angry mutter, from where she sat in the ground with her legs crossed in a meditative pose. She held a small stone in each of her fists. "I will give him crude."

"I thought you were supposed to _not_ blow up the stones, strawberry." Ai said from where she laid in the ground a small distance away from the pink haired girl. "And not, you know, blow them up, as you seem to be trying."

That was not the actual purpose of the exercise Louise was practicing.

The exercise was one developed by their sensei, with the intent of improving Louise's chakra control. There were several variations to it; right now Louise was supposed to focus her chakra on the stones she held in her hands and try to char only one of the stones.

At first the exercise had been about purposely burning both stones as fast as she could.

It had been the opposite of what Louise had been trying in any chakra control exercise she had tried until then, and she had been clueless about how to start. Eventually she managed to get the hang of focusing her chakra in just the right manner, so that the stone started to show clear signs of burns faster than before.

After that her sensei had come up with a variation to the exercise. Instead of burning both stones, Louise was supposed to burn the stones at different speeds.

It didn't take long for Louise to understand her sensei's idea. If she could, for example, consciously control her chakra so that she managed to burn something faster, she now should be able to do the opposite and slow down the burn on whatever she tried her chakra on.

It ended up not being as easy as that – as if anything on Louise's life was ever easy – but Louise didn't give up and had managed to somewhat slow down the rate at which she usually burnt things. It hadn't been enough to master the exercise, but Louise kept trying.

She still hadn't mastered it completely, but nonetheless her chakra control improved drastically, as Louise slowly learned to filter some of that part of her chakra that had more destructive properties.

"Anyway," Ai continued. "Don't listen to what sensei says. He's just trying to get a rise out of you."

"I know, I know." Louise replied. "It's just that I lost so much time trying to come up with something, anything that allowed me do defeat his genjutsu, and that's the only thing he says?"

Hayato snorted. The teenager had been practicing some kata when Louise and Ai started speaking, but stopped to hear Louise's rant.

Louise turned to him. "Do you have anything to say?"

"Yes, I do actually." Hayato replied.

Ai looked at him cautiously, dreading what he would say.

"Every time I start thinking you might actually be useful you go right ahead and show what you really are: a big crybaby brat." He continued.

"What did you say?" Louise asked coldly.

"So you managed to surprise sensei and actually hit him, big deal. Did you want him to give you a medal?"

"No." The pink haired girl retorted. "But a compliment wouldn't hurt."

"Why?" Hayato asked, looking seriously at her. "Because you were born with the right bloodline, one that allowed you to escape his genjutsu and surprise him?"

Louise remained silent, not knowing how to reply. Ai didn't though.

"That's not fair Hayato. Her bloodline also stops her from using regular jutsu."

Hayato turned to the older girl. "Tell me, do you really think that if she didn't have a bloodline she would have been here with us? She probably wouldn't have passed the academy! The only reason she did was because of that."

Louise slumped. She heard Ai saying something back to their teammate, but she didn't care. He was right after all. Didn't Louise herself told them the only reason she passed was because the Hokage intervened? Her bloodline was the only reason he did so, she knew that. Things might have been different if she hadn't been born with the bloodlimit she had, but she did.

Slowly, a small tear started streaming down her face.

Ai saw it, and turned to glare at Hayato, gesturing towards the smaller girl.

Hayato looked at her for a few seconds.

"Ugh, dammit … Sorry. I'm sorry ok? It's just that …" Hayato's shoulder slumped. "You're not the only one who's been trying to hit sensei in a fight. I've spent the last four years trying to hit him once and never managed to. And then a freaking twelve year old rookie comes along and manages to do it, and instead of celebrating you're sulking. Yes your bloodline ability helped you hit him, but you do have some merit in how you used it. I shouldn't have belittled what you accomplished."

Louise raised her head and looked at him, stunned.

He shrugged his shoulder. "Nowadays I don't spar as much with him as I used to. I realized I'm never going to be a jounin, and I probably won't ever be able to actually lay a hand on the man, but it still stings to see someone so much younger than me doing it."

They remained in silence for a few seconds, until Louise broke it.

"You were right though." She said in a small voice. "I only passed because of my bloodline."

Hayato opened and closed his mouth, not knowing what to say.

"You shouldn't sell yourself short." Ai spoke.

Louise looked at her.

"You told us you were one of the best of your class at theory right?" She questioned, only continuing when Louise nodded. "And one of the best kunoichi in taijutsu, correct?"

Another nod.

"Then you would have probably passed even without a bloodline limit." Ai continued. "With that kind of scores, you would only need to master one or two of the basic academy jutsu to pass, and that's easy. If you could use regular jutsu like we can, you would have mastered them no problem."

"Do you think so?" Louise asked in a hopeful tone of voice.

"Yep, I do. Hayato does have a point in what he says though; if you didn't have bloodline ability you probably wouldn't have ended up in this team. You would have a regular team with genin your age, but even the fact you ended up in this team is a kind of compliment from the Hokage you know."

"What do you mean?" Hayato questioned the older girl.

Ai turned to him. "Think well about it. The three of us started doing C-rank missions almost right from the start, and we only did that because both the Hokage and our sensei had faith on the team, in _all_ members of the team. I doubt many rookies get to go on C-rank missions quite so soon as strawberry here."

They became silent for a few moments, thinking about that, while their emotions slowly cooled down.

"Well, that's it." Hayato said. "I'm going to sleep, I'm tired and we have to start moving real early in the morning if we want to find out the village and deliver the scroll we're supposed to. Besides I will have the last shift guarding the camp. Good night."

The girls gave their farewells and Hayato moved towards the tent he and Kaito-sensei shared.

Louise threw the stone she had in her hands away and let herself fall to the ground.

"Tired?" Ai questioned.

Louise nodded. "And sore. Sensei didn't go easy on me after I've managed to hit him."

"I have just the thing for that." Ai held one of her hands in the air and green medical chakra became visible in her hands. "I know this awesome massage."

"Ai, don't' tease." Louise complained. "You know medical chakra doesn't work on me."

_Damn bloodline_, Louise thought. It had to disrupt _every_ kind of chakra that directly interacted with hers.

"Hehe." Ai smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, wasn't trying to be mean, really. I can still give you a massage if you want."

"Don't worry." Louise replied. "We should be getting ready for our shift anyway."

"Do we need to, really?" Ai asked pouting.

Louise glared at her. "Yes, we do. We should also get our things ready; tomorrow morning we need to leave early, and I can't wait for this mission to wait and return to Konoha."

"You're a meanie." Ai said under her breath, even as she followed her teammate to their tent.

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Kaito had a bad feeling.

He didn't quite know when it started. Maybe it had been when he and his team arrived at the small village, where the person they were trying to find was supposed to be, and no one seemed to know him.

It also may have started after they left the village, following directions of someone who supposedly knew where the person they were searching for lived, only to find out they were slowly heading out to the middle of nowhere, just on the edge of one of the many forest that existed in the Fire Country; a great place for an ambush, his treasonous mind whispered to him.

Or it might have started when he laid his eyes on the person they were supposed to deliver the scroll to. The man might have been dressed as a farmer, and worked like one, but he was definitively a ninja.

Kaito though, believed his bad feeling really started when the obviously-not-an-farmer saw them come and whistled, loudly, calling two other men to join him.

He was pretty sure they also weren't farmers.

"Sensei…" Hayato started.

"I know, don't get nervous, there might be a perfect explanation for this." Kaito said with more confidence than he felt. "It's not unheard for foreign ninja to use shinobis from a different village as couriers in some cases, especially if they need some kind of guarantee of impartiality."

Kaito didn't say what else he was thinking out loud. If these shinobi were out to get them, it was useless to try to run now. If they were even as low as chunin they would be able to catch them fairly easy. His students wouldn't be able to outrun them, and in that case his team would be attacked from behind.

By facing them head on there was a possibility of avoiding conflict, and if not Kaito would make sure his team managed to get away, whatever the cost.

He ignored the part of his mind that loudly told him these weren't great odds.

Slowly his team inched closer to the strange shinobi. When they were six or seven meters away they stopped, and Kaito asked.

"Is there a Mr. Mori here?"

"Yes." One of the unknown ninjas said. He was the tallest of the bunch, with several scars decorating his pale face. "It's me."

Kaito nodded at him and threw him the scroll. "This is for you."

The man casually reached and picked it up. He opened it and started to read.

"Well then," Kaito started after a few moments of silence while the man read. "We will be going then."

"Ah, so soon?" One of the other shinobi asked in a mocking manner. "Don't you want to wait a little, take some refreshments? Some tea?"

He was a small man, willowy and weak looking. Kaito didn't pay much attention to that; a ninja didn't have to look impressive to be strong, but the aspect might give some clues about his style. Kaito would bet he was someone who focused on genjutsu.

Mori, if that even was his real name, probably was a taijutsu master. You didn't get muscles like those from anything else. The last member of the group obviously was a swordsman, seeing as he was carrying a sword on his back.

"No, thank you." Kaito replied, not letting any thoughts of the analysis he just did appear on his face. "We really need to leave."

The ninja was going to say something else, but Mori beat him to it.

"Everything's in order." He said and looked right at Kaito, even as he continued speaking to his colleagues. "The information is all here, and there's a little extra. The pink haired girl has some kind of unknown bloodline. Capture her alive; our master will surely like to study her."

For a moment everyone remained frozen, simply looking at each other, and then they moved.

"Back." Kaito said to his team. He needed them to get to safety, lest they were used against him as hostages. "Get back."

He didn't manage to say anything else. Mori and the swordsman moved fast, and suddenly they were right on top of him, attacking.

Kaito's genin gasped as their sensei started moving faster than they ever saw him while he fought with the enemy shinobi, but they quickly overcame their surprise and obeyed.

Ai and Hayato jumped back to try and gain some distance from the fight, but Louise wasn't as lucky. The last remaining enemy caught a glance of her eyes and used a genjutsu on her. Louise fell, the stirrings of unconsciousness upon her.

There was a lull in the fight and Kaito sensei managed to join his two older genin, where they had stopped a few meters away from the fallen figure of their teammate. The three enemy shinobi also regrouped, but far closer to the young girl.

"Louise…" Ai started speaking, but Kaito silenced her with a gesture.

Mori's sight remained focused on them, but he gestured towards one of his colleagues, the one who used a genjutsu on Louise. The shinobi nodded and slowly moved towards the downed girl, keeping his attention on her team.

"You'll regret this." Kaito gritted out, frostily. He wasn't one who usually lost himself in monologues, and he never showed his emotions as obviously as he just did, but he wanted to keep the foreign ninja focused on him, the one who they believed to be the biggest threat.

"I don't think you'll have the chance to make that happen." The genjutsu specialist said from where he was crouched over Louise. He carefully grabbed her arm and started to pick her up.

Kaito waited just for the right moment and then he spoke.

"You're right." He said with as much confidence as he could on his voice. The enemy shinobi looked at him, surprised at his admission, and got distracted for just a moment, just as Kaito wanted.

And Louise lashed out with her fist.

Mori saw her move and started to say something, but the enemy that was grabbing her didn't manage to even blink before she hit him and got blasted apart.

It seemed as if everything from his knees up simply decided it didn't want to continue occupying the same space as every other piece of his body, and chunks of the frail-looking shinobi simply rained all over the landscape behind him.

Kaito attacked. He knew what was going to happen the moment Louise hit the guy, and he was ready for it. The instant he saw her touch him he started moving.

No matter how experienced or how much they might want to, there are some things that are still able to freeze a ninja on his tracks, even if for an instant. Seeing a comrade become a cloud of blood-red and bone-white mist was one of these things.

Mori and his remaining ally might be experienced shinobi, and they might not even have cared much for their teammate, but seeing him reduced to so much as vapor on front of them was enough of a distraction that when Kaito attacked they didn't manage to react fast enough.

Kaito targeted the swordsman first and, using a small genjutsu that altered his depth perception for good measure, the jounin-sensei managed to evade all of his defenses and strike out with an elbow at his throat.

Somehow, either by instinct or something else, his opponent realized the danger he was in, and managed to rotate his body just a little. Enough to save his life as Kaito's elbow hit him half on the throat, half on the collarbone, but not enough to stop Kaito from taking him out from the fight for a few moments.

With one opponent down, Kaito turned towards Mori.

They started exchanging fast hits. Mori still was somewhat unbalanced from his teammate's death, and Kaito scored a couple of hits. Nothing really serious, just small annoyances, but slowly Louise's sensei got the upper hand.

Using genjutsu again, Kaito made the foreign shinobi hear a small sound on his side, and used the distraction _that_ caused to break Mori's nose with a fast punch. Mori reeled and the Konoha jounin snatched the scroll his team had delivered from his opponent's waist.

He then proceeded to kick Mori in his ribs and sent him flying a few meters through the air.

Kaito backed up a little and returned halfway to his students' position and threw the scroll Ai's way.

"Go."

"Sensei." Ai started, but he interrupted her.

"No discussion. You only be a hindrance in this fight, go!" He turned to Louise and saw the pink haired girl looking in stupefaction at her own hands. "Louise, Louise."

The younger girl shook herself, blinked and looked at him.

"You did good." He continued and then spoke to all of them. "What are you waiting for, go dammit! Run."

Reluctantly, his students obeyed. They did so with a heavy heart, not knowing if they ever would get to see their sensei again, and desperately hoping he would manage to defeat his opponents.

"Run fast!" Kaito said to himself, even as he turned from the sight of his fleeing students to face the two oncoming shinobi.

.

.

.

They had been running for five minutes when someone finally caught up to them.

Their sensei's figure dropped from the foliage above them and crash-landed in the ground. He started to get up, stopped and remained on his knees for a few moments, breathing hard, before he finally stood up and turned to them.

"I've managed to lose them, but they won't take long to catch up to us, we need to go!" He said before focusing on AI. "You have the scroll?"

Ai nodded. "Yes sensei."

"Good. Let's move," the jounin said.

"Sensei!" Ai called, and he turned back. "It's best if you hold onto it."

The older girl threw their scroll towards their sensei.

He must have seen the small tag filled with seals that was stuck to the scroll; that was the only possible reason for the two steps he hurriedly took back.

The three explosive tags Ai used to trap the scroll exploded less than two meters away from their sensei. The explosion was loud and bright and the shockwave blasted him clear from his feet and threw him several meters away, where he smashed his back against a large tree.

"Ai…" Louise started.

"That was not out sensei." Ai interrupted her, speaking in a far more commanding voice than the Louise ever heard her speak before.

They remained in silence for a few instants before Hayato slowly questioned. "You sure?"

Ai bit her lower lip. "Pretty sure. I think."

"I'm going to murder you, brats!" A voice said in a pained tone from where the shinobi crashed.

Mori rose from where he had fallen and turned towards them.

At least, Louise thought it was him. It was hard to be sure, he looked like … like…

Louise was unable come up with anything that she could compare to how Mori looked.

His chest was a mess of pink, red and blacked skin. His arms were basically the same; only his face showed some improvement, at least there wasn't as much carbonized flesh there.

Louise couldn't understand how was it that he was still alive, much less how the hell he managed to remain conscious and on his feet.

Slowly the older shinobi started walking towards them.

Hayato looked at Ai and Louise, silently questioning if they should try to fight.

Their opponent was clearly weakened but he was still older and more experienced than them. If they ran he might be able to catch up to them, and there was still the matter of their sensei. Was he still fighting the other ninja, or was he dead?

Mori slowly approached and Hayato shook his head and advanced on him.

He exchanged a couple of hits with the older ninja; Mori was clearly diminished in effectiveness, but he was still faster than Hayato, although barely. Still, that, combined with his experience was enough for him to gain the upper hand. A few moments after the beginning of their fight he managed to grab Hayato's arms and twisted, throwing the genin into the ground.

Mori tried to follow up and attack Hayato while he was down, but a couple of thrown kunai by Louise and Ai made him fall back a few steps.

Louise's teammate didn't give up and got as fast as he could and renewed his attack.

Mori blocked the first two attacks Hayato used on him and then he grabbed the younger ninja's arms, and rotating, threw the genin at his teammates.

Ai and Louise tried their best to grab their teammate before he crashed, but he hit them with enough strength that they fell to the ground in a pile of limbs.

And Mori kept approaching them.

Louise was the first one to get up. She saw the enemy closing in and prepared herself to attack.

If she hit him with her explosive fist technique, he was done for. The problem was that he saw her use it before and he probably wouldn't give her an opportunity.

_But he doesn't know I don't have to hit him to use it._ Louise thought to herself.

She didn't have a chance to try. Before she took a step forward their sensei's figure once again crashed through the foliage above. He hit the ground between the younger girl and Mori, hard, and seemed to sway for a moment before regaining his focus.

The two older ninjas remained still for a few moments, before Mori ended the silence. "So you took care of Takeshi, huh?"

"Yes." Kaito replied.

Mori looked seriously at him for a moment, before suddenly smiling. "He got you, didn't he?"

Kaito's genin team looked from one adult to the other, trying to find out what the foreign shinobi was talking about.

Their sensei nodded once again.

Mori chuckled. "Takeshi brews some nasty poisons, you won't last long."

Kaito's eyebrow rose. "Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

His opponent chuckled again, louder than before. There was a hint of hysteria in it. "Yeah, well, your students surprised me. Clever brats."

"I'm surprised you're still standing."

"I'm sure you are," Mori replied. "And that comment is definitively not a clever ploy to find out why."

Kaito remained silent.

Mori chuckled again before continuing. "You don't have to worry about it; we're both dead, you when the poison runs its course and me when I ran out of chakra. What you should worry about, is if your students are joining you in death or not."

Kaito bristled and Mori started laughing.

The jounin-sensei kept still and let his opponent finish, before they seemed to reach a consensus and both attacked.

Louise easily noticed they weren't as fast as before, but in some ways that just made their fight more impressive in her eyes. Now instead of seeing blurs moving around, she could clearly see two grown ninjas using their incredible taijutsu skills in a fight to the death.

There's wasn't a hit that wasn't blocked, and every block was done in a manner that allowed an immediate counter-attack. The result was an incredible dance of tangled limbs than never seemed to touch their opponent.

Louise wanted to help her sensei, but in face of what she was seeing she knew she would hinder him.

The fight continued for a couple of minutes and the pink haired girl couldn't help but notice her sensei was starting to lose.

It was hard to believe. Mori was completely wrecked, but he still managed to slowly gain terrain against Kaito-sensei.

Louise bit her lower lip. If Mori was correct, then her sensei had been poisoned, and she could see that he appeared to become even paler and breathing harder as the fight went on.

Soon enough the strange ninja started dominating the fight completely, and in a move that the Konoha jounin couldn't avoid, he tripped Kaito and sent him against the ground. Louise's sensei rolled out of the way before the other man could try to attack him; Mori tried to follow him, but had to stop for a moment to try and breath.

Both men were panting, exhausted and with difficulty breathing. Kaito shook himself and slowly rose from the ground. Louise saw him grab his right arm, and noticed he had a stab wound near his elbow.

Their sensei signaled something to Hayato before he started talking.

"You're good." He said to Mori.

"Not good enough … to live it seems." Mori replied with some difficulty. He made some kind of whistling noise every time he inhaled or exhaled.

Louise knew the other ninja wouldn't outlive the day, and some part of her couldn't help but wish he would die already.

She thought about using the lull in the fight to attack the older ninja, he was probably weakened enough, but then she caught sight of Hayato through the corner of her eye.

Hayato slowly started cycling through several seals and cupped his hands in front of his face. Fire left his mouth and it condensed into a small ball of flame in his hands.

Louise turned towards Mori, wondering why the shinobi had allowed her teammate to prepare his attack and noticed he seemed completely focused on her sensei, not paying the minimum attention to anything else. A moment later she realized why.

Her sensei was using some kind of genjutsu and had basically hypnotized his opponent. Mori seemed to hinge in every word Kaito said, and while he was distracted Hayato prepared his attack.

Hayato finished his jutsu and released it, pointing his hands at the foreign shinobi.

The fireball didn't simply move to envelop the enemy ninja; it stretched until it became a literal cone of fire that crashed against Mori.

He screamed, loudly; it was a pain and rage filled sound, and then Mori moved. Not away from the flame as any sane person would do, but into the fire itself, until it completely enveloped him. Instants later he appeared in front of Hayato.

Louise's teammate was completely unprepared for the move and could only widen his eyes.

Fortunately, Kaito-sensei reacted faster; after he saw Mori starting to move he ran and prepared himself to intercept the shinobi. It seemed luck wasn't completely on their side though; Kaito-sensei stumbled – weakened and disoriented by the poison– and crashed into the ground.

He still retained some control during the fall, and moved just enough that he managed to crash into Mori's legs.

If there's anything that Louise will always remember perfectly about that fight in the woods, it will be the sound her teacher's kunai made when he nailed Mori's knee.

It was loud and disturbing, a sound capable of making anyone wince just from hearing it.

The kunai easily pierced through bone, cartilage and muscle, and secured itself solidly in the knee.

Mori screamed again, a scream that resembled a howl more than anything else.

Somehow, he was still able to attack one last time and he kicked Kaito's head so strongly that the Konoha ninja was sent flying through the air and crashed unconscious a few meters away.

The attack cost him, though. His wounded knee failed and he crashed into the ground, where he remained kneeling and unmoving.

Ai swiftly made her way towards their sensei, readying herself to try to heal him.

Louise made to follow her, before deciding to stay behind and help deal with their opponent.

Hayato angrily screamed and repeated the technique he had used before. He was faster than before – he wasn't worried about attracting attention this time – and a blast of fire leaped from his hands and enveloped Mori.

The attack was much stronger now, fueled by Hayato's rage and his worry about their sensei. Louise couldn't even hear Mori's screams over the sound of the fire, so loud that it was, and when the flames were finally extinguished only a blackened corpse remained.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Mori's body hadn't even started to cool off, before Louise and Hayato moved towards their teammates. Ai was leaning over the jounin-sensei, checking his pulse, and then used her hands to feel the back of Kaito's head, trying to see if unconsciousness was the only thing that resulted from Mori's last kick.

Satisfied that she didn't find anything out of the ordinary, she turned to her teammates. "Louise, I need you to get me my backpack; Hayato boil me some water, please."

Both teammates did as requested. Soon enough Louise returned and Ai reached into her backpack and picked a small medical kit. With Louise's help she used a pair of scissors to cut away their sensei's jacket's sleeve. Ai scowled when she saw the stab wound visible near her sensei's elbow.

Hayato returned and the girls slowly cleaned their sensei's wound, being careful not to hurt him as they worked. Hesitantly, afraid he would distract them, Hayato asked.

"How's sensei?"

Ai took a few moments to reply, even as she used her hand to feel Kaito's forehead. "He's feverish, not much for now, but enough to be noticeable. His elbow is a little swollen, could be from the wound itself or because of the poison; I can't tell yet."

She leaned back for a moment and looked at both of her teammates.

"I don't like this, guys. The poison was strong enough to basically stop sensei in his tracks. I can clean the wound, bandage it and give him a multipurpose antidote, but it won't help much – if the ninja brewed his own poisons he probably used an unknown poison or an exotic one."

"Do you think he'll wake up?" Louise asked timidly. They hadn't talked much about poisons at the academy, but Louise knew they could cause a pretty broad range of symptoms. Unconsciousness was something that wasn't universal to all poisons; some were actually made to a person suffer as much as possible – lack of awareness was something undesirable in that case.

"I can't tell." Ai replied, smiling a bit in an attempt to cheer her teammate. "Mori was the one who knocked sensei out, but the poison might keep him unconscious. I can use some medical techniques to make sensei recover a little strength, but that might not make him wake up."

"What do we do?" Hayato asked her.

"We need to get to Konoha as soon as possible." Ai said in an uncharacteristically serious tone, looking directly into her friends' eyes.

"So be it."

It didn't take them long to prepare and start the journey back. They moved as fast as they could; Hayato was the one carrying their sensei – Louise was too small to do it, and Ai needed her strength to better use medicinal chakra.

As the hours passed it became obvious that they were moving too slowly. Their sensei remained unconscious and his fever spiked, and the genin became increasingly worried.

Hayato cursed to himself. They were moving faster than they did when coming in the opposite direction – they had enough time to complete the mission, so they had moved in a very relaxed manner – but it still wasn't enough.

Soon enough it became dark. They kept moving nonetheless, with their worry about their sensei overcoming their fatigue, but knowing that eventually they had to bow to the inevitable and rest.

"Enough! Hayato, you can't keep going like this. You're barely standing." Ai called out her teammate after an hour more.

Hayato ignored her and kept going.

"Goddammit Spikes, stop already." Ai shouted. "We need to rest and I need to check sensei."

Hayato thought about grumbling, but realized he was too tired to do even that. He stopped and with Louise's help they set their jounin-sensei in the ground.

Ai immediately started unraveling the bind around Kaito's right elbow. Her nose twitched, and she had to turn her face away for a moment at the smell that hit her airways. A moment later Louise and Hayato also made a face of disgust.

"What is that?" Hayato asked while holding a hand over his nose.

"The wound's infected." Ai replied, managing to ignore the smell rather well. "I need to cut the bandages away."

It took her a while to finish. Their sensei's arm had swollen enough that the previously loose bind was tight enough to mark the skin. The wound was raw and full of pus, with its extremities showing a greenish tint.

Ai focused on that last detail. "I think the poison is doing this."

Hayato noticed his teammate's hands were shaking. "Louise," He started turning to his other teammate. "Find us some kindling to light a small fire."

Louise looked from Ai to him, and after realizing he wanted to speak with Ai, nodded, moving further into the woods.

Hayato watched her go with a frown. Louise had been withdrawn during the journey, which he supposed was only natural, but it would be best if she snapped out of it. It was preferable to leave any contemplations for when they were home in Konoha, where distractions wouldn't get you killed.

Ai sighed and leaned back from where she was crouched over their sensei.

"He's … It's going to …" She started stammering and couldn't finish speaking.

Hayato put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

Ai choked a sob and remained like that for a few seconds, before she shook her hand and rose from the ground. "It's bad Hayato, if sensei doesn't have specialized care soon he's going to die. We're moving too slowly."

Hayato looked at her. Her eyes were red and she was breathing hard. He had never seen her so worn down before and knew only the seriousness of the situation was stopping her from completely breaking down.

He did the only thing he could; he hugged her for a moment and simply held her. "Do whatever you can. I have an idea."

An irresponsible and dangerous idea, but an idea nonetheless and the only chance they would have to provide care to their sensei on time.

Ai leaned back from the embrace. She could see that his eyes were turned in the direction of Konoha, although his sight seemed unfocused. A moment later he shook his head and sighed.

Louise came back a few minutes later. Ai was busy with their sensei, while Hayato seemed to be gathering a few supplies into a backpack. He turned to her and looked her up and down.

"You need to rest." He said.

"What?" Louise asked taken aback. "You're the one who was dead on his feet."

The moment she said that, she colored; she didn't mean to sound so … _bitchy_. Hayato glared at her for a moment and reigned on his own urge to reply.

He blew his breath before looking her right in the eyes. "You'll need your rest. Tomorrow, at dawn you'll have to set out to Konoha. We won't be able to save sensei otherwise."

Louise was struck speechless for a moment. "But…"

"It's the only way, Louise." Hayato continued with a startling seriousness in his voice.

Louise looked down, clearly nervous. She was afraid, not for her life, but that she would fail to arrive on Konoha on time, and that Kaito-sensei would die because of that. A moment later Hayato's words seemed to echo inside her head, and she was forced to put her doubt's aside. If she didn't do this, their sensei would die, not doubt about it.

She looked up again and Hayato could see a new resolve in her eyes and in the manner she held herself. He nodded at her, and she nodded back, and that allowed Hayato to see Ai's furious expression behind the pink-haired girl.

Ai's fury was concealed when Louise looked at her; she gave Louise an encouraging smile instead. Louise smiled back and with a small wave she left them and entered the tent she shared with the older girl.

Ai turned towards Hayato. "Are you mad?" She hissed, being careful not to be heard by their younger teammate.

"Ai…" Hayato started.

"She could be killed out there." Ai continued. "It isn't safe."

Hayato waited a few moments so that his teammate could cool off a little. "It's the only way; you've said it, if we don't get help our sensei is going to die. This is the only way."

Ai inhaled deeply and seemed to prepare herself to reply, but he didn't let her.

"Besides, she isn't safe here." He said. "Not if someone's after her, not if they attack us again. In that case the closer she gets to Konoha, the safer she'll be. No one will dare attack a leaf ninja so close to the village."

He knew he was playing dirty, using Ai's worry about Louise to manipulate her, but it needed to be done. Their sensei's life depended on it.

Had Ai been more composed she might have argued that if they hadn't been attacked so far, they probably didn't have anyone on their trail and whoever sent those people to attack them didn't know where they were. She wasn't though.

AI closed her eyes and sighed. "It's risky."

"Yes it is." Hayato replied. "But it's the only way we'll save sensei. With some luck Louise will arrive in Konoha in no more than three days."

Louise did it in two.

She left her teammates at dawn, after giving each of them a hug and a kiss goodbye. She could see that Ai had a few tears hidden away in her eyes, but she ignored them and smiled at the older girl. After her goodbyes to her fellow genin, she moved near her sensei, kissed him in the forehead and left.

Finding the direction to follow was easy; she only had to pay attention to the position of the sun in the sky. It was a basic skill that the academy taught her, in one of her first years there.

Where the woods were more abundant Louise stuck to the top of the tress, jumping from one tree to another, moving faster than she could on the uneven soil. When she was forced into the ground, she ran at a steady pace, not too fast and not too slow, so that she wouldn't overextend herself.

When darkness fell she was forced to stop and so she slept, strapped to the trunk of a nearby tree, hidden amongst its foliage from the rest of the world.

She ate little during the journey, too worried about her team and her sensei to even get hungry; drink was another matter and Louise consumed vast quantities of water.

Night was starting to fall on the second day when Louise arrived near the gates of Konoha. She jumped down from one of the smaller trees closer to the gate and had to lay there for a moment to breathe. Her legs hurt and her feet were sore; her lungs seemed to be on fire and she could feel her blood pounding inside her head. Despite this she slowly put one foot on front of the other and advanced towards the village.

She moved without thought, her body seemingly knowing where she needed to go. She closed her eyes for a moment and her body kept going. She woke up when one of the ninjas on guard duty shook her and realized she had walked several feet while sleeping.

"We were attacked." She said, interrupting what he was saying, not that she was paying him any attention – she barely had the strength needed to speak. "Sensei was poisoned. We need help; that way."

She finished, pointing at the direction she had come from.

She heard the guards talking between themselves and someone seemed tried to shake her awake, but Louise ignored them and let herself embrace the sweet calling of unconsciousness.

.

.

.

"I see you're awake."

The voice came from behind him. Kaito looked away from the window – one in the highest floor of Konoha's hospital, which allowed him to see almost the whole of village – and turned to face his visitor, Hiruzen Sarutobi, the one and only Hokage of Konoha.

The Hokage stood at the entrance of the room for a moment, perhaps waiting for a reply, before he entered. He let his eyes wonder over the jounin's body, pausing for a moment to look at the stump that was what remained of the younger's man right arm.

The poison had set too deep; in the end even with the amputation of the arm Kaito almost died, and had to remain an entire week unconscious.

"I think your doctor would prefer if you stayed on the bed." The Hokage continued speaking when the jounin-sensei didn't reply.

Kaito shook his head. "I couldn't stay lying down."

The Hokage smiled. He moved a few steps forward and proceeded to sit down on the edge of the unoccupied bed. "I know the feeling. I used to be like that in my youth. Then, sometime after becoming Hokage, I realized that any time I spent on the hospital was basically paid vacation."

Kaito blinked at him.

"No work, no paperwork, nothing to do at all. It was heaven." Sarutobi continued. "That doesn't mean I enjoy hospitals, but I learned to cope."

Kaito nodded, but remained quiet. The Hokage sighed.

"How are you feeling?"

Kaito looked at his missing arm. His shoulder moved a little, and the stump with it; he was trying to reach out to his now nonexistent hand and move the nonexistent fingers. His body tried to reply, but in the end the only thing he managed to do was roll his shoulder slightly.

The Hokage realized what the younger man was trying to accomplish and didn't interfere, believing that only he could come to terms with what happened.

Kaito kept trying for a few moments, until he realized it was futile and stopped. He kept still for a few moments. "I don't know." He said, replying to the Hokage's question.

Sarutobi could see that Kaito was in shook. The younger man kept glancing at his stump and away as if he didn't want to see it, as if he couldn't see his injury it wouldn't exist. The Hokage sighed again and kept silent, hoping that the younger man would say something else.

Kaito didn't. He turned his back on the village's leader and started looking once again through the window.

"It could be worse." The Hokage said a minute or two later.

Kaito turned towards his superior. "How so?"

His tone was curious, not a drop of anger noticeable on his tone. The Hokage, who had hoped anger might have snapped the jounin from his state of mind, shrugged. "Your genin are alive, and well."

Kaito smiled, thinking about his annoying students. "Well, things would get boring without them around."

Both men chuckled at that. Then the Hokage adopted a more serious demeanor. "What happened out there?" He questioned.

He was hoping to have a more complete answer than the one Kaito's genin gave him. And if along the way he managed to distract the jounin of the loss of his arm, so much the better.

"The mission was a trap, sir, right from the beginning."

Kaito knew the older shinobi must have heard what happened already from his students, but the Hokage wanted his version of the events. It was only natural – he was a jounin, a ninja with much greater skills than his students – there were all sort of details that a group of genin might miss, but than an more experienced ninja, like he was, wouldn't.

"We arrived at the town without any problems." He continued. "There were some complications once we arrived. Nothing dangerous, just the fact that unlike what had been communicated to our team, our target didn't reside in town."

"How did you find him?"

"One of the town's villagers knew who we were talking about." Kaito replied. He tried to remember the conversation he had with the man. It had been short and not much had been said behind the essential.

"Do you think the villager was a plant?"

"No." The jounin replied promptly. He thought about it when the Hokage questioned how exactly they had found Mori, but he dismissed the idea. He hadn't felt any kind of malicious intent from the man, nor seen anything that might make him think he was a ninja; just an exhausted farmer that was readying for work.

"Afterwards, what happened?" The Hokage questioned.

"We arrived at the location provided and immediately realized the man waiting there was a shinobi. When he saw us come he called his partners."

The Hokage made a humming noise and rose from the bed. He started pacing around the room. "He was aware, but not aware enough. He had backup ready to join him, but only did so after you got near him. What does that tell you? "

Kaito thought about it for a moment. "He knew someone would come, but not when."

The Hokage nodded. He kept wondering around the room, seemingly lost on his thoughts.

Kaito knew that was a façade, no matter how distracted the older shinobi appeared he was still one of the most powerful ninjas in the entire world – and people like that were never truly unaware of what was happening around them.

Sarutobi moved towards the room's window and gazed outside. Kaito took this as an invitation to continue his report.

"I decided to confront the foreign nin; we weren't ready to fight against a prepared enemy and diplomacy might have been enough to keep the mission from souring."

"It didn't."

There wasn't any kind of rebuke in the Hokage's words, just a simple statement.

"No." Kaito replied. "Although they only attacked us after Mori read the scroll. There's a chance that without whatever message the scroll contained, we would have been able to avoid violence."

"Perhaps."

Kaito paused for a moment. The Hokage's tone indicated he didn't believe that was probable. "Louise became their main target; it appeared the scroll mentioned her unusual bloodline, and that the ninjas' master might be interested in it."

"What were their exact words?"

"Mori said the information was all there, but that there was an extra – it was about Louise, mentioning her bloodline and that they should capture her alive. Their master would be interested in studying it." Kaito recounted from memory.

The Hokage tuned to him. "The scroll was what they wanted; Louise wasn't the main target, she a target of opportunity."

"So it appears."

"There's only one issue," Sarutobi continued, ignoring his underling. "How did the one who sent that scroll, knew that Louise's team would be the one to deliver it?"

Kaito paused. "They might have studied my team's routine and our previous missions, designing a mission that would have a good possibility of being assigned to us."

The Hokage raised one of his eyebrows. "Do you think that was what happened?"

Kaito shook his head. "No. I doubt anyone who managed to fool us into doing his dirty work would leave something like that to chance. But …"

"But that would mean someone manipulated the mission your team received." The Hokage finished what Kaito was going to say.

The jounin nodded.

"It presents a thorny conundrum, doesn't it?" The older shinobi questioned.

Kaito didn't reply. If someone with that much influence inside the village was actively conspiring against it, it meant that Konoha was at risk.

"I believe I know which master the ninjas that attacked you obey." The Hokage said after a few moments. "Orochimaru, my former student."

Kaito felt sick. Orochimaru was one of the most infamous ninjas formed in the Leaf, one who had been part of a genin team mentored by the Hokage himself, a team made of the three most powerful ninjas of their generation. They were called the Sannin, or the three legendary ninjas – Orochimaru, Jiraiya and Tsunade. They were once greatly hailed heroes of Konoha.

The something happened. Kaito didn't know what, but the famous team broke apart. Tsunade was the first to leave Konoha, sometime after the Second Shinobi World War.

Orochimaru ran away after several of his experiments were found. Kaito didn't know much about these, but he knew they had involved either dozens or hundreds of children and babies, and that most of them didn't survive. The fact one of his students was so close to have been sent to that monster made Kaito feel nauseated.

"Are you sure?" He asked, hoping there might be a mistake.

The Hokage reluctantly nodded his head, understanding the other ninja's reaction. He couldn't say he himself wasn't affected. "Unfortunately, yes."

"So Orochimaru has spies inside the village?"

"Maybe." The Hokage replied. He seemed distracted; thinking about something.

"What do you mean, sir?" Kaito questioned. He wasn't high enough in the hierarchy of Konoha to know anything about any spies in the village – sometimes it was better to let a known spy lie and use him – but the Hokage seemed to be in a sharing mood, and might say something else about his thoughts on the matter.

"I have some difficulties believing Orochimaru managed to infiltrate our structure to that degree."

"But you believe Orochimaru was the master of those three ninjas." Kaito said.

The Hokage nodded.

"Why would anyone give information to Orochimaru if they did not work for him?" Kaito questioned.

"Maybe someone was seeking an alliance." The Hokage replied.

"Then, why would they offer him Louise?"

"Tribute."

"Tribute? You mean a bribe, something they could entice Orochimaru with."

The Hokage nodded. "In a way."

"And Louise is that bribe?"

"I presume both she and the destroyed scroll were the bribe," The Hokage paused and turned once again to gaze at the village. "What I am worried about is why someone would seek an alliance with Orochimaru."

"You think someone plotting against us." Kaito said slowly.

"I don't think, I am sure of it." The Hokage retorted. He turned once again and faced the younger ninja. "In the last three months leaf ninja's deaths are up almost eight percent."

Kaito remained silent.

"There weren't any particular odd deaths; some chunin squads dead in simple missions, nothing rare, but more common than usual. It might have been simply bad luck on our part, but coupled with the attack your squad suffered these deaths start to appear to be a culling."

"Someone is trying to weaken us?" The jounin-sensei questioned.

"It appears so." Sarutobi answered. "The only reason why someone would be doing this now is if they intend to attack soon, probably during …"

"The chunin examination." Kaito finished.

The Hokage nodded.

Kaito hoped from the bottom of his heart that these suspicions were simply paranoia from the part of the Hokage, but unfortunately he couldn't truly believe that. What the older ninja was saying made sense, and Kaito couldn't help but feel it was correct.

"What will you do?" He questioned.

"I?" The Hokage asked. "I will do nothing of course. I will remain oblivious to the threat, the exams will occur as normal, and the moment someone tries anything, I will crush them and anyone who helped them."

The older shinobi said this in a dull tone of voice, almost as if he was speaking about the weather, but Kaito couldn't help but shiver. It wasn't killing intent; the Hokage was too controlled to do that, but his words carried a premonition of death of both friends and enemies, as only war could cause.

Kaito coughed for a moment, trying to dispel the gloomy ambience. "What about my students, Hokage-sama? Should I recommend them for the examination?"

"Why shouldn't you?" The Hokage questioned. "Do you think they are not ready?"

Kaito nervously wetted his lips. "They are, but what about what you told me?"

"I didn't tell you anything. It would be strange if you didn't recommend your team to participate in our examination, especially after the rumors of your last mission spread." The Hokage looked him right in the eyes. "Besides if someone does do something, they will be as safe participating in the exam as they would be in the village proper."

Kaito sighed and closed his eyes. He opened them a moment later and focused on the older man. "Who will train them, during these weeks?"

"You will, of course." The man promptly replied. He inclined his head at Kaito's stump. "That will not stop you, I believe. And it makes no sense to disrupt you team cohesion by introducing a new sensei only three weeks before the exam. Afterwards the team will probably be disbanded, as we had discussed previously."

The younger man nodded at that.

"We'll have to be realist, of course." The Hokage continued. "Your career as a mission ninja is over, but there's always use for a young and loyal ninja of the leaf. We will have to speak about your possible prospects after this is over. "

The older man started moving before Kaito could formulate a reply, and spoke in a far louder voice, a far merrier one, hiding the weariness and doubt it contained moments before.

"Anyways, there will be time for this conversation later. I think there's someone to see you."

He had barely finished saying this when someone opened the room's door.

Ai startled, when faced with the Hokage, but the old man simply nodded at her with a greeting of "Ai-chan", and left the room.

Ai watched him walk away for a few moments, before she remembered why she had come. She turned to face Kaito, and the jounin had to brace himself when the girl pounced at him.

He did the only thing he could. He held her back, hugging her, even as Ai sobbed into his chest

She was talking, but he couldn't understand her. She was pressed against his chest, which muffled the sound, and the continued sobs and hiccups made her speech completely unintelligible. He knew she must have been incredibly worried about him, so he let her hold on and made small comforting sounds.

Ai cried for a few more minutes, slowly winding down until she was content with simply holding her sensei. Eventually she released him and turned around.

He did the same, giving the young woman some time in order to dry her tears and clean her face a little.

"Hi sensei." Ai said moments later.

Kaito turned back to her. If not for her reddened eyes, it wouldn't be possible to say the girl had been crying at all. Ai's face was composed and a small smile shined in it.

"Hello, bothersome student."

Ai huffed and punched his shoulder. "Go fuck yourself, sensei."

"Such language!" He replied, acting shocked, before he shook his head and chuckled.

Ai huffed again and pouted. "And here I was, so worried about you."

Kaito smiled at her, little more than raising his lips, but a genuine smile nonetheless.

Ai didn't believe the smile, though, and became somber. "How are you?" She asked.

Kaito thought for a few seconds how to respond. "As well as I could be."

"And exactly how much is that?" Ai questioned with a raised eyebrow.

Kaito blinked.

"C'mon sensei, you can't just let yourself mope in here."

Kaito blinked again. "I'm not moping, I'm alright. Well not exactly alright, but I'm coping, even if I'm a little shocked, but…"

"That's normal." AI interrupted in a knowingly tone of voice. "Most ninja take a while to react to permanent injuries; it's not easy. Nonetheless you need to snap out of it, the sooner you do it, the sooner you can get on with your life."

Kaito looked deadpan at her for a few moments. "Your attempts at psychology suck, you know."

Ai pouted. "I've spent a good ten minutes coming up with that speech, you could at least pretend it did something."

"It did," Kaito said, nodding. "I realize just what a dork my student is."

"You're mean."

Kaito had to smile at his student. Ai did manage to take him out of the funk the Hokage's words had put him, even if she believed that state was due to the loss of his arm.

Oh, he wasn't over the fact he had a stump where he previously had his right arm, but he could cheerfully ignore that for now – he would have lots of time to process it.

The Hokage's words however, represented a far more pressing matter. If someone was going to attack Konoha they would put his students at a risk, and that he couldn't, _wouldn't_ let happen. He already sacrificed an arm for them; he was ready to sacrifice far more.

If he hadn't been in such a worry to follow Mori after the shinobi had ran after his students, he wouldn't had risked so much in his own fight. He lured his enemy, offering his arm as a trap, trying to end the fight as fast as possible. An injury would inconvenience him when fighting against Mori, but at least he would arrive on time to save his students. Only after being injured did he realized the weapon had been poisoned, but then it was too late.

"How's the rest of the team?" Kaito questioned.

"Reasonably well. I mean, they are worried about you and what is going to happen to our team, now that … you know _that_ happened," She said pointing at what was left of his right arm. "But otherwise they are … good."

"Really?" Kaito asked, surprised. "Even Louise?"

Extreme violence was hard on most ninja, only the most experienced or the most monstrous could ignore it comfortably. Louise wasn't most ninja; she was a twelve year old girl who had just basically left the academy. Not only that, but she had actively participated in the fight, killing one of the enemies in a particularly gruesome manner. He doubted she was alright.

Ai didn't understand what her sensei was hinting at. "No. Not really, I mean physically they're great, but they were really worried about you."

Kaito stared blankly at her. "I was more worried about the consequences on the fight in their psyche. Louise did kill someone after all."

Ai opened her mouth in an 'ah' of understanding. "She wasn't too bothered about it, although I think the fact that we had to take care of you and then she had to run all the way to Konoha, kept her functioning without difficulty. Afterwards she was unconscious for a couple of days, and then she had to worry about you again – when we arrived. When she had time to think about what happened, several days had already passed. That made it easier I think."

"Good." Kaito said. Louise had behaved admirably for a rookie genin during the mission and he was happy she hadn't had a breakdown. "That will make your participation in the chunin exams easier."

"Yes, I suppose. Although I think she blames herself for what happened …" Ai replied, before she stooped with sudden understanding in her voice. "Wait … you're still our sensei?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Kaito questioned in a nonchalant tone. He carefully noted away in his mind Ai's comment about the fact Louise blamed herself. He would have to deal with it; Louise wasn't to blame for them being attacked, even if the attackers had her as a target.

Ai seemed ready to burst.

"No shouting." Kaito ordered.

"He's still our sensei; he's still our sensei…" Ai chanted as she started hoping around the room, although not loud enough to be heard outside the room.

Kaito sighed and let her dance around for a while. It was easier than trying to contain her enthusiasm anyway.

"Where's the rest of the team?" He questioned a minute later, when the girl stopped.

"I don't know. I was on the hospital when I heard you were awake, so I … kind of forgot to tell them?" She finished sheepishly.

Kaito sighed. "Of course you did."

Ai stuck her tongue at him.

He ignored her. "Well then, I want you to go find them, I need to talk to them."

.

.

.

"… And then these two missing nins appeared. One of them was some kind of demon, but he wasn't that bad, even if he killed a bunch of people one time, and he used an enormous sword."

Louise was barely listening to Naruto's mumbling about how his team's first C-rank mission happened. The blonde boy was currently eating his favorite food, ramen, and as such his words were accompanied by the sound of food being chewed and swallowed – which made comprehension a little difficult. Only her vast experience with an eating Naruto allowed her to understand him.

Naruto stopped his story for a moment to breathe and drink, continuing then his tale. "The other one was the prettiest boy I've ever seen; he was even prettier than Sakura-chan."

Sakura, who was seated between Naruto and Louise, obviously disagreed, if the punch she threw at Naruto's head was any indication.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto cried. "What was that for?"

"He wasn't prettier than me!" She huffed, before crossing her arms and ignoring the apologies Naruto threw her way.

Louise, who was seated at Sakura's right side, smiled. These two were always the same. Although she had to admit there was some improvement in their relationship; a few years ago Sakura wouldn't even seat at Naruto's side, seeing as the blond boy was constantly asking her on dates.

That quirk of Naruto's hadn't stopped; he still tried to make her his girlfriend at any turn, but at least Sakura learned to ignore him.

Sakura, for her part, was quite clear on who she wanted to be with. For her Sasuke was the only boy in the whole world. Louise could understand some of the appeal; Sasuke was cute, strong and rich, but he was also … cold and liked to be left alone.

It wasn't as if she couldn't understand that, Louise supposed – his clan had been murdered just a few years ago. His entire family killed in a single night; his parents, uncles and cousins, all of them dead just like that.

Louise shuddered; she couldn't even imagine what that must have felt like. She knew something about being forcibly separated from her family, but at least in her case there was a small chance she might see them again. Sasuke didn't have that.

Louise shook herself and focused once again on her friends. "What happened next?"

Naruto eagerly continued the story, happily telling about the fight their sensei involved himself in and how Naruto had to save him when Kakashi-sensei got caught in some kind of water jutsu. Sakura interrupted him several times, straightening his story in some parts – parts in which Naruto embellished his owns accomplishments – and to make sure Sasuke got his due credit.

It didn't take long to finish the tale. In the end Team 7 survived without any major injury and they successfully completed the mission, even if it ended being a far more dangerous mission than anticipated. The missing nins that attacked them didn't survive.

"How's your sensei? I've heard you guys were attacked during your mission and your sensei is injured." Sakura asked a few moments after Naruto finished retelling their mission.

Louise shrugged, her good mood soured in an instant. "He's alive, but still unconscious. They had to amputate one of his arms; the poison he was injected with basically made it rot inside."

Sakura winced.

"Wow that sucks." Naruto said.

Louise shrugged again. She couldn't say anything to that. It did suck.

Kaito was a pretty good sensei, even if Louise sometimes lost her temper with him. She liked him, as did her teammates, and now they didn't even know if they would continue being a team, or if they would have to get a new sensei.

She hoped they wouldn't have to, but it wasn't likely; Kaito would almost certainly have to abandon his ninja career.

At least he would survive. In those first days after her team arrived even their sensei's life wasn't assured. In light of that the loss of an arm seemed minor.

Louise blamed herself. Not because the fact that their attackers wanted to kidnap her, as Ai seemed to believe, she couldn't have done anything about that. She blamed herself for not being stronger or faster. If she was she might have arrived earlier at Konoha; early enough to save all of their sensei. Or she might have made a difference in the fight against their attackers and Kaito might not have been hurt.

Louise knew she was being somewhat irrational. She was only twelve, she shouldn't been capable of defeating adult ninjas. The fact she managed to actually kill one was incredible. Problem was that she couldn't help but think that she should have been better.

She looked down at her food and away. She wasn't really hungry anymore.

"Louise." She heard Hayato's voice calling from behind her. She turned around and saw him coming closer to the Ichiraku's Ramen stand. He seemed somewhat out of breath.

"What is it?" Louise questioned.

"Sensei's awake."

It took her several seconds to process what he said, and then she jumped out of her stool. Hayato started moving through the streets and she ran after him, completely forgetting about the friends she left behind.

Naruto made to follow them, but Sakura clamped her hand on his shoulder and stopped him. He inclined his head at her, silently asking why she stopped him.

"Let them go, Naruto. They need to do this as a team." Sakura replied.

He turned and followed Louise with his eyes until she left his sight. He sighed and retook his place on the stand, with Sakura following him.

They remained silent and thinking about Louise, hoping everything would be alright.

.

.

.

It didn't take long for Louise to notice they weren't moving in the direction of the hospital.

"It's what sensei ordered." Hayato replied when she asked him. "Ai told me he wanted us to meet him at the usual training ground."

They rushed thought the streets, dodging the people, sometimes walking either on the walls or the roofs of the buildings around them. Soon enough they arrived near the cluster of trees that hid the training ground. They slowed down and walked through a small beaten path.

Kaito and Ai were already there. Their sensei was sporting am annoyed face while Ai was jumping around loudly proclaiming something.

He turned to them, showing a face full of weariness, and inclined his head at their female teammate, as if asking why he had to put up with that.

Louise exchanged a look with her male teammate and they had to stop themselves from chuckling; Ai could be really excitable sometimes.

Noticing her sensei's gaze, Ai turned in their direction and smiled.

Kaito contented himself with simply looking at his students as they slowly positioned themselves around him. Ai was smiling, much as she had since they left the hospital. It was easy realize she had been really worried about him, but seeing him awake took that weight off her shoulders.

Hayato was showing a more serious demeanor, but Ai's smiling face made him also crack a smile or two.

Louise was the one who worried Kaito. She had almost chuckled when she and Hayato arrived, but now she was withdrawn and crestfallen, looking down at the ground. The jounin-sensei sighed – that was just what he needed.

He stepped forward and put his remaining hand on the top of her head. She startled, and raised her head, looking right at him, locking her eyes on his.

"What's up, strawberry?" He asked, smiling and using the nickname Ai gave her. The one he knew Louise didn't enjoy.

Louise's lips twitched and her eyes seemed to become a little watery for a moment. Then the small girl closed her eyes for a few moments. When she opened them, they remained dry, without the promise of tears that were there before. She moved forwards, slowly, and engulfed him in an incredibly strong hug.

Kaito smiled, looking down at her pink haired mane, and slowly rested his head on top of it. Louise's hug was as emotional as the one Ai gave him, even if it didn't involve a single sob. A moment later, Louise released him and returned to her teammates' side.

Kaito gave his students a look over, and liked what he saw in their faces; resolve, stubbornness, will. "Three weeks from now the chunin examinations will be held in Konoha."

The three genin stood straighter, waiting for Kaito to continue.

"As your sensei," Kaito saw his students grin for a moment. "It's my duty to make sure you're as prepared as you can for this challenge."

He turned his head and focused on Ai. "Your taijutsu is very basic, and your offensive ninjutsu and genjutsu is mostly non-existent."

AI made a face at him.

Ai had the control to become a good genjutsu user, but lacked the mentality needed to make it really effective. It was a shame, but control without the required mindset behind it made genjutsu more than a hindrance than anything else.

"Nonetheless," He continued. "Your medical skills make you invaluable to the team, and your skill with throwing weapons is good enough for you to support your comrades during a fight. The fact you usually use explosive tags combined with those thrown weapons make you this team most dangerous ranged fighter."

Kaito ignored her as Ai started pumping her arms up.

"We're going to use that. We'll focus on improving your throwing skills, and I'll see if I find someone who can help you learn how to use chakra threads. It's a skill very used by the Suna puppeteers; it's actually what allows them to control their puppets. You don't have to reach nowhere near that level of proficiency, but if you manage to attach a thread to kunai and throw it, you might be able to make it change direction midair for example. Combine that with your use of explosive tags and … well, I am sure you can see the possibilities." He finished inclining his head at the brunette.

Ai nodded in an uncharacteristic solemn manner.

Kaito turned to Louise. "You share some of the problems Ai has; you're redeeming qualities are your taijutsu, which is really good for someone of your age and build, and your bloodline. Your appearance is also something you can use to your advantage; most genin who see you will presume your strong point lies in genjutsu or, at the most, ninjutsu. They will try and close in on you. That's when you surprise them."

Louise nodded.

"You probably won't try to use your offensive bloodline abilities unless you really need to, and that's good; you should try and keep casualties to a minimum, but you shouldn't hesitate between using them and saving a friend's life." He said gesturing to her teammates. "We'll use these three weeks to train your explosive fist ability. You need to be able to control the size of the shockwave blast; a smaller blast might allow you to injure someone and take them out of the fight without killing them. A bigger blast might be useful as a short ranged attack, if for some reason you can't get close to your enemy."

Louise nodded again.

"I also need to find some weaker taijutsu sparring partners. You're too used to fight against me; that might have warped your perception of your opponent's capabilities, making them seem better than they really are. Overestimating your opponents is as dangerous as if you underestimate them." He said before turning to the last member of the team.

Kaito looked at him for a long moment.

"Hayato, you suck." The jounin said, shrugging his shoulders. "I tried to exchange you for a better model, but they told the genin factory was closed. So you'll do."

"Wha …?" Hayato's jaw dropped and he remained like that for a few moments, until the giggles from the two girls reengaged his brain.

He closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes, looking like he wanted to strangle the older man. "You know what sensei, go…" He started saying, before he breathed deeply and held his comment to himself.

This made the girls giggle again. Kaito smiled.

"C'mon spikes don't tell me you can't even curse sensei right. It's like this," She said, turning to Kaito. "Go fuck yourself sensei."

She stuck het tongue at him at the end of it, for good measure.

"Now that Ai showed us just how mature she really is," Kaito said as Louise giggled once again. "We can advance to more serious matters. Hayato, you're the most cerebral ninja in the team. You have a good grasp of tactics and strategy. You're also the best rounded team member. That's why you'll lead the team during the exams."

Hayato looked surprised. He looked at his teammates and they nodded and smiled at him. Ai raised her hand in an ok sign. He smiled and relaxed. If his teammates believed in him, he would do his best and everything would go alright.

"Individually there's not much you can improve in time for the examination." Kaito-sensei continued. "That's why you'll be focusing on how to lead and in developing strategies with your teammates. You need to know and understand your teammates' fighting styles and how best to mesh them with your own, and you need to improve your observational skills. We'll train several scenarios and the best manner to reply to them; it's doubtful you'll find yourself in a situation in any way resembling those we will simulate, but the practice will be essential for you to get used to pressure of leading a team."

"Yes, sensei." Hayato replied, nodding at the jounin.

Kaito glazed again over his students, lingering a few moments in each of them. "I have faith in you. Now let's get you ready to kick some ass."


End file.
